There has long been a argument and philosophy coming from the Republicans™ that the rich are the ones who carry us, with the middle-class helping. While the poor and lower classes sit around all day and collect money while paying no taxes.

And that it is the poor who are bankrupting this country through entitlements as the rich sit by helpless in their agenda to create jobs and prosperity in America.

This, of course, is not true in any way. This is called "Divide & Conquer", a tactic in which you defeat your opposition by turning them on each other to weaken their alliance, then conquer them when they are divided, split, and torn from within.

OK thats a big stretch data show that a big portion of the federal income tax burden is shoul­dered by a small group of the very richest Americans. The wealthiest 1 percent of the population earn 19 per­cent of the income but pay 37 percent of the income tax. The top 10 percent pay 68 percent of the tab. Meanwhile, the bottom 50 percent—those below the median income level—now earn 13 percent of the income but pay just 3 percent of the taxes. These are proportions of the income tax alone and don’t include payroll taxes for Social Security and Medicare now it’s true that the distribution of taxes is somewhat more equally divided when payroll taxes are accounted for—but the change is surprisingly small. Payroll taxes of 15 percent are charged on the first dollar of income earned by a worker, and most of the tax is capped at an income of just below $100,000. The Tax Policy Center, run by the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution, recently studied payroll and income taxes paid by each income group. The richest 1 percent pay 27.5 percent of the combined burden, the top 20 percent pay 72 percent, and the bottom 20 percent pay just 0.4 percent. One reason that the disparity in tax shares is so large is that Americans in the bottom quintile who have jobs get reimbursed for some or all of their 15 percent payroll tax through the earned-income tax credit (EITC), a fairly efficient poverty-abatement program.

As for entitlements (which are the problem and must be adjusted) one would have to understand the above and then add to the top earning percentages the percenatge of entitlements that they receive and as to wether they are trulty needed at their respective income level.

It should further be said that the class warfare bs is and old. If a lager group constantly requires the smaller more productive group to support them and the smaller productive group starts to shrink while the lrger group requiring support grows it is only matter of time before the productive group in order to survive has to cut off the dead wieght before they to need support, facts are facts. Just follow the PIG sates (aptly named) and see how the larger group has destroyed the smaller productive side through entitlements to the point of failure.